Linkwithin is a great tool for webmasters to show related posts link below the post to reduce the bounce rate and increase pageviews. I was using linkwithin in my blog and one day I noticed a great looking related post widget with attractive thumbnails on labnol.org I thought Amit agarwal, author of the blog labol, made this widget by himself. But the link on the widget was like traffic.outbrain.com/blablablab.
So I googled the keyword “outbrain” and got the following:
I entered the site, registered and pasted their widget code on my blog’s template. The appearance and the thumbnails of the widget is more elegant than linkwithin and many bloggers reported that linkwithin work faster than outbrain but I don’t notice any difference in speed.
Image courtesy: Digital Inspiration
When you log into dashboard on their site they have a section called “Blog Reports” which gives valuable information about your site like how much click and pageviews you have received through your outbrain related post widget and these features are lacking in linkwithin.
They support platform like wordpress, blogspot, typepad, drupal, squarespace and they also have a javascript code which is universal and can be installed on any platform.
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@bdtechie, Thanks for the for the great review!
Hey lisa,
thanks for dropping by…
I’ve been using Outbrain for a few months now, and I really like the layout and how it just fits quite seamlessly with most blog templates!
The only gripe I have is that the articles it recommends don’t seem very related to the post at all… I’m also using YARPP to show a list of related posts for each article, and I find that YARPP is so much better at displaying articles that are actually related. Its a pity because I really would like to use YARPP at the bottom of my posts, but Outbrain just looks so much nicer.
Outbrain – any chance of revamping the algorithm to display more relevant results?
Hey Outbrain CEO here. Bdtechie – thanks for the great post – highly appreciated!
Boon – good comments. Your point about relevancy is spot on. But here’s 2 things that are going on which you should be aware of:
1) Our algorithms are tuned to show readers the most *interesting* links, and those aren’t always necessarily the most relevant ones. In many cases our data shows that the highly relevant links are actually getting a lower click-through-rate, probably because the reader feels they’re already educated on the subject and are ready to move on and discover new stuff. So while our algorithms get smarter over time about showing readers links they are most likely to click on and create more engagement on your blog.
2) Unlike most other solutions, our service personalizes the recommended links for each reader. For example – we filter links that you’ve already clicked on because those obviously won’t be interesting for you anymore. This works very well for readers, but – as the owner of the blog you’ve probably clicked on quite a few links already and so those are filtered *for you*. Due to that, your blog readers are likely seeing much more relevant links than you are…
I hope that helps clarify what’s going on. Thanks for giving our service a shot! I hope you’ll find it useful for the long run, and more importantly – that your readers will find the links interesting and keep clicking!…
If you have any more questions or feedback, please drop by our support forum – http://getsatisfaction.com/outbrain or shoot me an email to galai[at]outbrain[dot]com
Hello Mr. Yaron Galai thank you for your little time here.